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The Leatherman MultiTool’s Inventor on the One Thing He Never Uses It For

Tim Leatherman, inventor of the eponymous mul8-tool on his other knife, how he hacks pens and the decades he spent manually rolling his car windows down

I’m prey sure that my hearing loss is caused by having the same very noisy oscilla8ng razor up next to my ear every day for about 50 years. But a while back, my luggage was temporarily lost and my host loaned me a new rotary shaver that was nice and quiet. Ever since then I’ve been shaving with a Philips Norelco electric razor, most recently a Philips Norelco Shaver 3500.

After my longtime ballpoint pen went out of production, I went on a big search for something new and finally found the Zebra 4-Color Multi Pen and Pencil. Of course, it wasn’t quite what I wanted, so I modify it with gel ink cartridges from a different pen so it flows smoothly. I play tennis against my business partner using a Prince racket – the same one I’ve been swinging for years. For the most part, I don’t credit or blame equipment for my performance on the court.

In most cases I tend to be a person who keeps things for a long 8me —I’m always one of the last to embrace something new. It was only in the last few years that I started driving a car with electric windows. For the 23 years prior to that I drove a 1988 Nissan Stanza Wagon that I nicknamed “The Box.” Now I drive a 2013 Toyota Prius. I most appreciate the fact that it can get as much mileage as it does and s8ll offer such power and accelera8on. I hope it lasts as long as my Nissan.

When my wife and I travel, I always carry a paring knife in my suitcase because she loves fruit. And the worst thing you can do with a Leatherman knife is to peel fruit because the juice squirts out into the tool and gets between the blades into the hinges. When it dries, it really gums things up and you can’t open and close the blades anymore.